Seattle Times & Newsday Sue OpenAI, Microsoft

According to TechCrunch, two additional news organizations initiated legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft regarding the utilization of their reporting to train artificial intelligence models. The complaint filed by The Seattle Times and Newsday contends that generative artificial intelligence, defined here as technology capable of generating text and media from prompts, threatens to break the journalism industry. The court filing characterizes tools such as ChatGPT and CoPilot as massive consumers of human-authored content that return copies and derivative imitations to achieve commercial goals. Notably, the lawsuit from The Seattle Times stands out because Microsoft and OpenAI have previously provided funding for certain projects and fellowships at the publication.

This litigation adds to a growing wave of legal challenges from media outlets against major technology companies regarding copyright and content usage rights. Following similar action by The New York Times in 2023, these ongoing disputes highlight escalating tensions between publishers and artificial intelligence developers over training data transparency, intellectual property protection, and the long-term sustainability of original reporting.

A Microsoft spokesperson stated to GeekWire that the company expressed surprise regarding the lawsuit while remaining willing to meet and explore solutions for the dispute.

The legal confrontation between regional newspapers and major technology developers underscores ongoing disputes over intellectual property, content scraping, and the future economic model of professional journalism in an automated landscape.